Warm some full fat goats’ milk or mix 1 part Cimicat to 2.5 parts previously boiled water. Add ¼ teaspoon probiotic (e.g. Avipro) and 0.25 ml of a multivitamin (e.g. Abidec) to 100ml of milk or formula.Feed warm, with a 1ml syringe or kitten feeder. If rabbits have loose droppings feed Kaogel (0.2mls)

Essentials

Timings

Little and often seems to work best. Feed every 4 hours to start with (day and night) and as they grow lengthen the gap between feeds. Give as much as they will take.

Don’t be fooled; it is a lot of hard work to raise orphaned rabbits, but success makes it very worthwhile.

Weaning

Start weaning at four weeks. Give lots of hay / readigrass. Make any changes very slowly - hand reared rabbits are much more susceptible to digestive upsets and can still be lost at 6 to 10 weeks old.I advise that you do not rehome them until 12 weeks of age for this reason.

Cleanliness is very important, ensure all syringes, bottles etc are clean before each feed. Use a baby sterilising solution for this. Wash hands before handling in case of carrying any infection to them.

This is Flecky, one of the hand reared rabbits we kept, now ten years old!

Does will only check and feed their litter once or twice a day, so don’t make the mistake of assuming she has abandoned them and start hand rearing just because you don’t see her with the babies.

We only had to hand rear beccuse their mother died when they were nine days old. We managed to rear seven out of the nine babies which we feel was a real achievement as some people said that none of them would survive.

Click to see a video of them aged 3 weeks (not great quality unfortunately)...